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The search engine began Map Maker in 2008 with a group of countries with small populations such as Bermuda and Iceland. Users were able to edit such lonely places as Antarctica and Svalbard, the archipelago in the Arctic Ocean that was the setting for some of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, before Britain.

It is also possible to edit the map of North Korea. Users have already added some of the country’s infamous gulags and a nuclear test facility in North Hamgyong, in the east of the country. Features in the secretive state remain scarce on Maps, but Google showed how its North Korea map was almost entirely blank before it accepted users’ contributions.

Mapmakers posted sarcastic “reviews” praising the prison camps immediately after the North Korean section went online in January.

In Pyongyang more serious cartographers have marked the 105-storey Ryugyong hotel and Kim Il-Sung University, where the current leader, Kim Jong-un, studied.

Google reportedly removed the word “favela” from its map of Rio de Janeiro this week after repeated complaints from the city’s mayor and a tourism company that it gave excessive prominence to the shanty towns in the hills around the city.

Users are able to draw shapes to define areas as town boundaries or deserts, as well as aiding Google determine the shape of buildings. It is also possible to create cycle routes using the application.

The United States, Germany and China are some of the countries that users cannot currently edit with Map Maker.

A group of technology companies led by Microsoft has made a formal complaint to the EU about Google’s Android software, which includes Maps. The group, which calls itself Fairsearch, says that the way Google gives Android away for free with certain smartphone and tablet models is anti-competitive.